Dawn Of Humanity Video Analysis

The video Dawn of Humanity is an interesting lesson about trying to bridge that gap between the Australopiths and homo genus. They briefly talk about previous finds such as Lucy and the different characteristics of Australopiths and homos. We watch how Professor Lee Berger worked with a group of scientist and climbers to explore a cave system that held thousands of bone fragments. Two cave climbers Steve and Rick were the ones who originally found the bones and took photos of them to show their friend Pablo who showed Lee. This is what started the Rising Star excavation. Lee found 11 scientists who were small enough to fit in the caves and bring out the fossils. It was a three-week project where they found 2,000 bone fragments that belonged to 12 different people. They were able to determine that it was a new member of the homo genus. The video goes into some detail about what traits distinguishes humans from apes and the different fossil evidence to separate our ancestors. The main thing that separates humans from our ape like ancestors is bipedalism. We are able to walk long distances and no longer have brachiation like arboreal primates. Our ancestors can be divided by how bipedal they were. Some of our ancestors
could walk short distances but were still mainly tree climbers. This is a very important feature in determining where they fall in our ancestry and in which genus. They also talk about how important the skull is for determining which genus a fossil belongs in. Our early ancestors had small brains and large protruding faces. While our more close ancestors have similar skulls as current humans. Large brain with smaller faces, that is more curved and soft featured. Tool making is briefly brought into the discussion of determining where a species belongs in the genus. It was once believed that only those in the homo genus were able to make and use tools. They believed this because of the bigger brain, which would suggest they were more likely to have more complex thought. However, they found that some Australopiths also had bone tools that they used. So tool making is not a one hundred percent foolproof way to determine where a fossil would fit in the genus. It is still used as an indicator because some tools are more complex and only found in certain areas but it is not the smartest way to age or group a fossil. The Rising Star project found way more fossils than they originally anticipated. The cave was extremely deep and hard to get to. In some areas they had to crawl on their stomachs just to get through. The only opening was through a large shaft they had to climb into it. They believe that cave would have been equally hard to get to in the time the fossils would have been alive. The age range of the fossils found were very young and very old with out much in-between ages. This is very similar to graveyards you would find today and in previous history. Unlike similar cave site they did not find any other animal bones. This suggests that it may have been a burial. That statement comes with a lot of controversy. If they were intentionally placing the dead that means they had the brainpower for abstract thought and a higher brainpower than the skull would suggest. While they believe it was in the homo genus, the brain was still quite small.
Recent discoveries similar to the Rising Star project shows that there were many different primitive ancestors living at the same time.
This suggests that we may not have one direct ancestor but a genetic mixture of many through cross breeding. The video talks about how we want to group species together in family trees but that does not seem to be true. We cannot find a straight line through out ancestors to make a clean family tree. They believe it was more of a bush that had many small branches that may have been messy and complicated. They compared it to evolutionary experiments that different populations were trying and some succeeding while others died out. It would be extremely hard to make a straight line through that evolutionary
history.